Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company (most commonly known as Disney) is the largest media and entertainment corporation in the world. Founded on October 16, 1923 by Walt Disney and his brother Roy O. Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, it is today the number two media company in the United States. The company's corporate headquarters are located in Burbank, California. Disney had revenues of $34.3 billion in 2006, and it is a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. For much of its history, the company was known as Walt Disney Productions, Ltd., until February 6, 1986, when it was rechristened with its current name. Disney Enterprises, Inc., commonly seen in company legal notices, is a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company. Divisions Disney's main operating units are Studio Entertainment, Parks and Resorts, Media Networks, and Consumer Products. Studio Entertainment Its Studio Entertainment unit, also known as The Walt Disney Studios, is headed by company president Oren Aviv. It includes the Buena Vista Motion Pictures Group, a collection of movie studios including Walt Disney Pictures, Touchstone Pictures, and Hollywood Pictures. The Miramax Films and Dimension Films studios are also a part of the unit, but operate autonomously in New York. Disney's Buena Vista Music Group, which includes Walt Disney Records, Mammoth Records, Lyric Street Records, and Hollywood Records, also falls under the umbrella of The Walt Disney Studios. The unit also includes Walt Disney Theatrical and Disney's distribution companies: Buena Vista International, Buena Vista Home Entertainment, and Buena Vista Home Entertainment International. One of the company's most successful and historically signifigant subsidiaries is its animation studio, Walt Disney Feature Animation, responsible for producing a number of successful and influential traditionally animated features. In the aftermath of the box office failures of some of its recent animated films and the stellar successes of computer-animated films from Pixar, Disney has shifted its production from "traditional" hand-drawn animated films (which in recent years have incorporated much work done on computer) to entirely computer-animated films. The last traditionally-animated film was 2004's Home on the Range, and the first three computer-animated films were 2005's Chicken Little, 2007's Meet the Robinsons and 2008's Bolt. Disney had fallen under much criticism for this change in direction, especially from fans who see the strength of a movie as its plot and its characters and not as the technology used to make it. However, 2009's The Princess and the Frog, the first 2D-animated film in five years produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios and DisneyToon Studios, the second and final being the most recent 2011's Winnie the Pooh, and it was announced on April 30, 2012 that Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures will no longer distributed animated motion pictures under the Walt Disney Pictures banner, due to 20th Century Fox taking over the franchise in 2014. Since late 2009, DisneyToon Studios, the former television animation satellite studio with previous operations in Australia, Paris and Burbank was rolled into Walt Disney Animation Studios as a division focussed on direct-to-video animated masterpieces based upon Disney Consumer Products franchises, television programs, and original properties. On November 24, 2010, Disney's 50th animated motion picture, Tangled, Disney's first 3D-animated fairy-tale, was released in late 2010. Shortly after the film's release, the Los Angeles Times reported that Ed Catmull said the "princess" genre of films was taking a hiatus until, "someone has a fresh take on it … but we don't have any other musicals or fairytales lined up." He explained that they were looking to get away from the princess era due to the changes in audience composition and preference. However in the Facebook page, Ed Catmull stated that this was just a rumor. Walt Disney Feature Animation will be currently distributed worldwide by Paramount Pictures (owned by Viacom International), starting in late 2012 with Wreck-it-Ralph, the second 3D-animated film created in widescreen cinemascope for over five decades, the first being 2010's Tangled and Walt Disney Pictures will be currently owned by NBC Universal, starting in 2014 with Hercules vs. Tarzan, the second highest-grossing 2D-animated film of all-time to be directed by Rob Minkoff & Roger Allers creative team directors, the first being 1994's The Lion King. In 2006, Disney/Pixar executive John Lasseter the Chief Creative Officer of Pixar Animation Studios and Walt Disney Feature Animation and Principal Creative Advisor of Walt Disney Imagineering. Walt Disney Feature Animation, the company's main film and television production facility and corporate headquarters located in Burbank, California, is the only major Hollywood film studio that has never offered tours to the public. A partial tour of the Orlando, Florida feature animation satellite studio was available to attendees of Disney-MGM Studios (now known as Disney's Hollywood Studios) until 2003. Media Networks The Media Networks unit is centered around the American Broadcasting Company (owned by NBC Universal), which it acquired through a merger with Capital Cities/ABC in 1996. Ironicly enough, it was ABC that helped Disney open the Disneyland theme park in 1955 with financing. Disney also owns a group of cable networks including the Disney Channel, ABC Family, Disney XD (formerly Toon Disney), the ESPN group and SOAPnet through Disney-ABC Cable Networks. Disney also holds substantial interest in Inside Edition (aired on CBS). It also owns ABC Studios, which produces and distributes television programs not only for ABC, but other television networks. Through ABC, Disney also owns local 10 television stations, ESPN Radio and Radio Disney, the latter two of which are considered part of the Disney-ABC Cable Group. Disney-ABC Domestic Television, formerly known as Buena Vista Television, which also is a part of the Media Networks unit, produces such syndicated television programs as the American version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and Live with Regis and Kelly, It sold a majority intrest of their 22 radio stations not affiliated (or owned) with either Radio Disney or ESPN and the ABC Radio Network, which includes media personalities such as Sean Hannity to Citadel Broadcasting in 2007. Disney also operates its Hyperion publishing company and Walt Disney Internet Group (WDIC) through Media Networks. Hyperion has recently published books by comedian-author Steve Martin and bestselling author Mitch Albom. WDIC includes the Go.com web portal, based on the old Infoseek search engine which it purchased in 1998, and leading websites such as Disney.com, ESPN.com, and ABCNews.com. Consumer Products Its Consumer Products unit includes Disney's merchandising and licensing business and its Disney Publishing Worldwide group, whose imprints include Disney Editions, Hyperion Books for Children and Disney Press. It also published the Disney Adventures children's magazine. The unit includes TheDisney Store chain of shopping mall locations, which it sold in 2004 to The Children's Place, but were repurchased in May of 2008, and also includes Jim Henson's Muppets characters, which it purchased via the merger with The Jim Henson Company in 2004. References Category:Media